


The Last Safe Place

by Ink



Category: Glee
Genre: Comfort Sex, Comfort/Angst, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink/pseuds/Ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When things go south with Burt, Kurt finds himself on Blaine's doorstep again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Safe Place

_Let me know if there's anything I can do_ , is the last text Blaine sends; he doesn't get it until he's landed in Lima, is thumbing through messages numbly in the airport lobby, waiting for Finn to pick him up.

He stares at it, blankly, and doesn't answer.

 

*

 

_\--stabilized now,_ the doctor is saying, cool and professional, _we'd just like to keep him overnight to make sure._

Kurt isn't really listening. They've turned up the AC too high in this room; points of cold like pinpricks spread across his skin. He's abjectly grateful for Carole, who's conversing with the doctor for all the world like nothing's wrong. He supposes, after a fashion, that nothing is.

Finn squeezes his shoulder from behind, a little too tight. "Hey," he says, soft for Finn. "He's gonna be okay. They say he's gonna--"

"I _know,_ Finn," he snaps, and winces when--judging by the way absolutely everyone in the room turns to look at him--it comes out louder than he'd intended. He takes a gulping breath. "I don't--sorry," he manages, strained. "I don't mean--anyway, excuse me."

"Oh, sweetheart," he can hear Carole say faintly, but it's still only Finn who follows him into the hallway, saying, "You all right, man?"

Kurt looks blearily up at him.

"Okay, right, dumb question." Finn tries to slide an arm around him again, and Kurt lets him. _You've got to look out for one another,_ his dad had said abruptly, looking between the two of them. _I hope you'll always be able to count on that. Someday Carole and I will be gone, but you two--_

_Dad,_ he'd cut in, only a little frantic, _stop talking like you're about to die._

_I'm not gonna die,_ in the same wry and assured tone he always used for pronouncements like this. Kurt had long since ceased to find it comforting. _Not anytime soon. I'm just saying--it's different, when you're gonna be stuck with someone for your entire lives. I want you to remember that._

"Hey," Finn says again. Kurt blinks up at him. "I think Mom's got things covered here, so if you wanted to head home--"

( _\--one last flight back to Lima, one day, to sell the house neither of them could bear to live in anymore even if Kurt had any intention of settling in Ohio again--steaming carpets and repainting walls and making everything empty and clean and blank, ready for some stranger's life to step into--will he be 35, or 45, or younger--_ )

"I don't want to go home," Kurt says. He wraps his arms around himself.

"Why not?"

He shrugs.

"Okay, well," Finn says sensibly, "you gotta sleep somewhere, dude," and Kurt whispers, "I know." He looks down at his phone, which he is still clutching tightly. It's 11:40. _Let me know if there's anything I can do._

With shaking fingers, he raises it and begins to type. _Are you there?_

 

*

 

Blaine stands barefoot in the entryway, wearing an oversized t-shirt and a pair of plaid pajama pants that are frayed at the ankles. His hair is wet and down, in curls, and Kurt thinks if this was any other time, if he had come from any other place, he would have teased Blaine about this. "Hey," he says instead, and it comes out off-pitch, a little strained. "Your parents are really out all weekend?"

Blaine shrugs, too casual. "Aren't they always? Come in," he adds, standing aside, and Kurt steps across the threshold, Blaine's eyes warm on his drawing him inward. "Is everything all right with your dad?"

"He's stable," Kurt says, barely more than a whisper. "Blaine, I--"

He breaks off, gaze flickering to the floor. Behind them the door slides shut with a snick. "This doesn't," he starts.

The lines of Blaine's mouth contract. "Please," he says quietly, "don't say this doesn't mean anything."

Kurt studies his shoes, the incongruity of the heavy leather against marble tile. "Please don't ask me what this means."

There's a long moment of silence--and then Blaine is leaning forward to hug him tightly, half on his toes. The weight of his hands as they press along Kurt's back is solid, too-familiar. Kurt contemplates breaking away; lets himself sink instead, still in the circle of Blaine's arms.

 

*

 

Blaine leads him silently up the familiar staircase and through the hallway, flicking off the lights as he goes. The house is quiet save for the humming of white noise. He thinks of that McKinley hallway half-darkened, never _friendly_ but somehow, that night, different--

Blaine's bedroom, at least, is more or less the same. Different books on the dresser, different pictures on the walls--the frames by Blaine's bed haven't changed, though. Maybe he should find it strange that Blaine still keeps his photographs on the nightstand, but it's comforting, somehow.

He hears a soft click behind him: Blaine shutting the door. "Kurt," he calls softly; his voice rises upward, almost like a question.

Kurt turns, the tips of his fingers still brushing the top of a frame ( _junior prom, Kurt's arm draped around Blaine's neck and clutching; both of their smiles wide if strained under the lights_ ). The corners of Blaine's eyebrows are drawn up in silent concern. "How--are you--" he starts. Stops, swallowing heavily. "Do you--need anything?"

His gaze is steady, imploring, and Kurt has to tear his eyes away. "I don't--" His throat is tight, closing around whatever he might have wanted to say next. "I'm good," he manages. "Can--can we just go to bed?"

There's such a silence.

Slowly, Blaine lowers himself onto the bed, sliding in towards Kurt. "You're seeing someone," he says, cautious, like a warning. 

"I--Yeah." The word is a dry breath. He thinks of Adam, undoubtedly asleep in his apartment hundreds of miles away; hopes that he's all right, that he isn't worrying too much. He doesn't really miss him. "I'm not--I wasn't going to do anything," he protests. "I just want--"

Blaine looks back up at him. He clasps his hands together, the fingers lacing; in his eyes is a silent question.

What Kurt wants is to be away from all of this: from his mind whirring endless iterations of hypotheticals, from the heavy lassitude of his unresponsive limbs. He wants everything to really, finally, permanently be okay. He wants _Blaine_ \--he does want Blaine, he realizes with a lurch, wants the steady weight and heat of him, his mouth trailing warm and wet down Kurt's throat, doing him up at the seams. He wants Blaine to hold him still.

( _junior prom, that McKinley hallway half-darkened, never friendly, but somehow, that night--_

_Blaine extends his hand._ Are you ready for this?)

The bed creaks as he sits down heavily, letting his legs collapse out from under him. Standing up doesn't seem possible anymore: movement hardly seems possible. He isn't a person right now, doesn't feel like anything but a million little particles, each with their own gravity, all beating angrily against the useless container of his skin. In a moment they'll break through and he'll go flying up and up and up, fifty thousand miles above Ohio and eating empty air--

"Kurt?" he hears Blaine say, and then again, " _Kurt,_ " wet and cracked with pain, and then Blaine has both arms locked tight around him and all the feeling rushes back into Kurt in the space of one breath, one terrifying jolt of his heart straight out of his chest.

He doesn't realize that he's crying until Blaine is saying, shakily, "hey, hey, Kurt, hey," and Blaine's hands are stroking circles up and down his back, gentle and perfect and horribly familiar and his throat hurts but he can't actually _stop_ crying, not for anything, not at all. "Shh," Blaine murmurs, "shh," still stroking, "it--it's going to be okay, okay? You're going to be okay," and he's shaking his head furiously, still choking out sobs into Blaine's shoulder.

Because he _knows_ : he knows, he's been here before, he knows that everything is fine now but that it never lasts; he knows that eventually, it will all be fine again. He will survive, even without his father. He will survive whatever is done to him.

Blaine hasn't let him go, just keeps on rubbing his back as his sobs slow to gasping breaths. Kurt has his head on Blaine's shoulder, and doesn't lift it. "I'm just tired," he says, "of surviving things."

Blaine's arms tighten around him, like he's just remembered that he, too, has been something Kurt has had to survive. "I'm sorry," he says, low and scratchy, and then (mercifully) he doesn't say anything else.

How long they stay like that, he doesn't know. Kurt breathes out and doesn't move and carefully does not think of anything except the solidity of Blaine's shoulder, the fabric of his t-shirt scratchy beneath Kurt's cheek. It works, after a fashion: long seconds pass, and the world doesn't tilt at all, and he feels perfectly, gloriously empty.

Blaine is the one who moves, finally, jostling against Kurt's chest as he attempts to shift upright. "Come on," he says, still so gentle. "You should try to get some sleep." 

Kurt feels every point of loss acutely, when Blaine unwinds himself from him and rises: every place Blaine was pressed against him which is now cold. Blaine is saying, "I think I still have some of your things somewhere around here," crossing over to the dresser, and Kurt wraps his arms loosely around himself and watches him shuffle through a drawer. 

Blaine lays the clothes out on the bed like an offering. Kurt lifts a hand to run it idly over the fabric, and, _oh._ He could laugh, really.

(He knows, without turning the shirt over to check, that there's a discolored patch on the sleeve, remnant of the _last_ time they were here: Kurt in the bathroom scrubbing furiously at a point-sized stain, Blaine pleading from the bed, _come on, Kurt,_ come on, _seriously, will you just come back to bed?_

It hadn't worked, obviously; he'd let it sit too long (dist- _rac_ -ted, ahem). He thinks of that boy in the bathroom, the one who never considered for a moment that he might not have all the time in the world; if he could go back he'd grab that boy by the shoulders, shake him, tell him to--

To what? Cling to every moment of innocence like it's your last, or get out while you can?

But he's not thinking about that tonight.)

This Blaine looks at him from the other end of a broken promise, but he glances over at Kurt with identical tenderness, and reaches out to turn down the corners of his lapel with identical care. "Earth to Kurt," this Blaine says, brings his hand up to brush his knuckles, feather-light, across Kurt's cheek.

A second later, he stills. "I--sorry," he says, swallowing. "I'm not trying to--I'll just give you some privacy, then," motioning to the pile of clothes with his free hand, and the tips of his fingers lift away from the skin of Kurt's cheek and that's when Kurt's arm shoots out, swifter than thought, to grab him back.

Blaine stops. Kurt sits there, blinking dumbly into space (don't look at him, don't look at his face), feeling the bones of Blaine's wrist grind against his thumb. There's something hot and damp and awful threatening to work its way out of his chest. "I--" he starts, has to clamp his mouth shut on whatever's going to come out next. Tries again. "Don't go," he says instead, and it's almost as bad: too high, too squeaky, too everything.

He closes his eyes and counts the seconds. Blaine's arm is limp, unresisting; he lets out a slow, shuddering breath. "I won't," he promises, and distantly Kurt thinks, oh, that's _funny._ Ironic, even. Blaine has already left him.

Blaine is still right here.

Here and now, Blaine pivots his wrist carefully out of Kurt's grip, leaving Kurt to let his arm fall back to his side. The bed dips with his weight. "You can't sit here all night, though." He tugs at Kurt's lapel again, an _off, off_ motion, and when Kurt turns to look at him, he finds that their noses are barely an inch apart.

It would be short work to close that distance. So Kurt does: he tips forward (Blaine holds perfectly still; his fingers curl and then loosen on the inside of Kurt's jacket) to let his forehead rock against Blaine's, lolling gently first to one side, then the other. Blaine's eyes drift rather than fall shut, the lashes fluttering. His other hand slides up to curve around Kurt's shoulder. They could almost, Kurt thinks, be slow dancing.

"I could," he says, after a moment. "I could stay here."

Blaine traces a circle over his shoulder blade, unhurried. "You could," he jabs lightly with that same finger-- "you really should sleep, you know." 

Still, he doesn't pull away. Kurt waits several long moments for perspective to slant sideways, to remember, in a sudden rush, all the reasons this is a bad idea--but there's only Blaine's breathing, slow, constant, in counterpoint with his. "Blaine," he says.

Blaine understands instinctively, as he always has. When he speaks his voice is very low. "What's your boyfriend going to say about this?"

He swallows. "I guess I'm about to find out."

It doesn't take much in the end: Blaine tilts his head barely a hair to the side, and--this has been the easy part for a long time now. One of Blaine's hands slides up to curl around the back of Kurt's neck, holding him there. Kurt exhales, one long slow breath, into the kiss.

They don't stop, but he doesn't feel any rush. At some point they fall back onto the bed, Kurt pressed down on top of Blaine and feeling all the contours of him even through two layers of clothing. Blaine's fingers are trailing up and down along his neck, an idle gesture, a habitual one: they are firmly in the _before_ but it puts Kurt in mind of _after,_ the way they would lie close and tangled, Blaine's expressive eyes reflecting affection and wonder and complete, total absorption.

Blaine has always been able to do this: to reduce the universe to two points of light, co-satellites; two slow, arrhythmic heartbeats. He misses that, abruptly. He misses being drawn into someone else's orbit.

Kurt lays his head back down against Blaine's shoulder, and the contact still doesn't feel like enough. "Blaine," he starts, swallowing against the lump in his throat. "Would you--"

Blaine doesn't answer right away. "Are you sure? Because Kurt, this is--right now, you're--"

_\--dating someone else, obviously upset, probably not prepared to deal with the consequences of this_ \--yes, he knows. "Please," he says anyway. "Do this for me?"

He waits patiently; it might be a little unfair, but he knows Blaine well enough to know what his answer must be. Blaine hesitates before reaching up to brush a stray lock of hair away from Kurt's face. "Okay," he says.

 

*

 

He wakes once in the middle of the night to find Blaine still clinging to his back in slumber, forehead pressed between his shoulder blades. For several long seconds he contemplates leaving--Blaine is a heavy sleeper, so he could probably sneak out--but in the end ( _still and quiet, Blaine's soft sighing breaths the only thing in that room_ ) it doesn't seem worth it, so he lets his eyes fall shut again.

The next time he wakes up, it's morning, and Blaine is gone. (The bed's comforter is still carefully tucked up to Kurt's chin.) Kurt pushes himself upright, slowly, shivering as the cold air hits his skin, and pads over to where his clothes are lying, neatly folded, on a nearby chair. Underwear first, then slacks, then the belt hanging over the back of the chair--

He's going to dress, and he's going to tame his hair into something resembling presentable shape, and he's going to drive back and see his dad. That's what's important; that's what he's going to focus on. He's not going to think about last night, he's not going to dwell on Blaine or his guilt--he's not going to dwell on the fact that right now, he doesn't feel guilty at all. There will be time for that later, he's sure. After he's checked on his family. After he's back in New York.

(He doesn't feel guilty, but he does--he always thought he would never do this, he would never, Kurt Hummel is not a cheater, and it is an act of deliberate and concerted effort to stop thinking about this because if he freaks out now he is going to--)

"Morning," Blaine says from the door, a little uncertain. Kurt freezes with his arms in the air, shirt pulled halfway over his shoulders.

"--hey," he says, lets the end of it trail off; the thing about not thinking is that it kind of leaves you with nothing to say. He tugs his shirt the rest of the way down.

A beat of silence. Kurt doesn't turn around; he reaches for his jacket instead. "I have to drive back to the hospital--my dad's being discharged." He says it too-quickly, tongue tripping over the words. "Sorry, I--" But he can't finish that, either; he can't think about what he might be sorry for.

"I figured," Blaine says, saving him from the rest of that sentence. Kurt hears him coming closer. "How are you--are you doing all right?"

He shrugs the jacket on, smoothing down the sleeves. "I'm fine," he says, turning around, and Blaine is _right there,_ holding a plate.

"I made toast," he offers, looking sheepish. "I thought you might want something to eat before you go? Or you could just take it in the car with you, if you're really in a hurry."

Kurt takes the plate. "Oh," he says.

He doesn't know why it's this that breaks him, the slices of slightly-charred toast cut carefully into triangles, but his throat is tight and he's blinking back against the tears in his eyes. He looks determinedly down, willing the swell of emotion to subside, but the tears keep trickling down his face, splashing down onto the plate.

" _Kurt,_ " Blaine is saying urgently; he brings one hand halfway up to Kurt's face, an aborted brushing motion, before seeming to think better of it. Instead both his hands find Kurt's shoulders, squeezing.

Kurt wipes his arm across his face. "I'm fine. I'm okay."

But Blaine's expression has turned grave, and he looks away. "I'm sorry," he says abruptly. "I should have said no. I didn't want to take advantage of you--"

"No," Kurt interrupts, before he can think better of it. He takes a deep, gulping breath; the admission hurts, but (he thinks) it would hurt more to lie. "You didn't."

He isn't thinking about it, but he remembers that much.

Blaine relaxes, but only just. "You're crying, though." His gaze flickers back over to Kurt's face, and his hands twitch like he's not sure it's okay to move them again.

"Yeah. I--yeah." He has to look down at his feet. How is this so hard? "But I'm not--" he sniffles a little, "I'm not upset, I--thank you, for this," he manages, still carefully studying his socks, and he can feel the lump welling up in his throat again. 

"Oh." Blaine steps back like it's an involuntary reaction, arms falling to his sides; his whole face contracts, and he seems touched. "Well, you're welcome. You know I--I promised I'd be here for you," he adds. "And I will. I _always_ will."

He doesn't ask, _well, what are your promises worth?_ , and it isn't out of kindness: today, this morning, he believes Blaine. He doesn't question that belief. He doesn't think about it. The drive back to the hospital is a long, lonely one, the purring of a rented engine his only company, and he has days to get through yet.


End file.
